Debts
by Hesiod
Summary: A series of snippets and drabbles set in chronological order following the bombing in District 2. A look into Katniss and Johanna's relationship as they share in each other strengths, demons, and aspirations. Implied/eventual Joniss.


Johanna Mason is a bitch. She's mad like a Capitol mutt, except no one's controlling her and damned if they even tried. Abrasive like an angry red wound, bright and hurting and demanding to be felt.

Xxx

Katniss Everdeen is the Mockingjay. She's the spark, the match from the box that hit the cement and lit up the streets then stayed burning. They fanned the flames and if anything's certain, it's that heat rises and heat expands, and like a rebellion it can grow strong and deadly in its nature.

Xxx

The hovercrafts drop bombs on the mountains in 2. Artillery booms with each beat of Katniss' heart, like a tick-_boom_-beat, tock-_boom_-beat. Haymitch is yelling in her ear, trying to bring her back. But Gale's deathtrap has her, too, and suddenly every single person in the Nut is her father, crushed beneath rock, lungs filled with dust. It horrifies her, from finger to finger, toe to head, and she watches the dust cloud rise mercilessly like the toll on her death list.

Xxx

When a bullet buries itself into her side and her next coherent thought is a hospital bed and Johanna Mason stealing her morphling, the Mockingjay has already done its job. The districts are united, melding together like conscription of a 75 year reserve. It's a simple thought she has that, at least for the next while, Katniss can just be Katniss.

Small, quiet, and defeated.

Xxx

"Wake up," Johanna says, because it's their third day of training and as much as Katniss has an arrow with Snow's name on it, she still needs someone to drag her out of bed.

It takes a string of profanities, teeth bearing through pain, and the impatience in Johanna's sunburst eyes to swing her feet off the bed. It's pathetic, really, because Johanna's the one who's frail and shaking like a leaf in the District 12 meadows; Johanna's the one who's drenched in sweat from a sleepless, jerking night, yet Johanna's the one who leads them to the training grounds to start their morning run.

Katniss lets her feet do the following and promises herself she'll try just as hard.

Xxx

Johanna's in the dirt, wretching out the few contents of her stomach. "Fucking _don't_," she snaps, when Katniss approaches to help. They're two miles into their run and it's the farthest they've gotten so far. Katniss can see the rest of the group, so far out they look like buzzing insects on the grassline. They must think it's a joke, having the two of them in their training class.

When Johanna stops wretching and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, Katniss nods her head back toward the trail. "Come on," she says. Johanna growls, then picks herself up off the ground. She resumes running, brushing past Katniss in the process.

The next three miles leaves them both feeling like trainwrecks, but with quiet encouragement they nudge each other back on track.

Xxx

Katniss wants to room with Prim, but one look at Johanna and she knows that's not an option. She can't leave her all by herself again; not like they did at the arena all those months ago. So Katniss offers to live with her.

It doesn't seem like a terrible idea. If Johanna wanted to kill her in her sleep, she probably wouldn't be dragging Katniss through training every day. Plus, there were worse things to be frightened of.

Like screaming in the middle of the night and waking Prim - then having to explain why every death since the Games is her fault; why her dreams are filled with ghosts and how they whisper every terrible thing she's done, how they've had to pay for it, how many more will. She'd rather not have that conversation.

Johanna might be insane, but Katniss has always preferred to face treachery up front. She knows exactly who's she's dealing with.

Xxx

Johanna looks at Katniss' belongings, touching every item with a unique fascination. She doesn't have anything of her own. Not many in 13 do.

When she plucks the pearl salvaged from the arena and holds it delicately between thumb and forefinger, Katniss' stomach tightens. She wants her to put it down. It reminds her of how a single person can enter someone's life and change everything, and how quickly you can lose them.

"Is this -?" Johanna starts, and Katniss cuts her off quickly because she doesn't want to talk about it and she most definitely doesn't want to think about it.

Xxx

It's Johanna that invites Peeta to the dinner table. In that moment, Katniss thinks Johanna really is insane - or maybe she just doesn't understand that Peeta isn't Peeta and everything about it is wrong. Dinner gets tense and Katniss can't help but wish nobody said a word when Peeta approached the table, can't help but think maybe it would be better if Peeta never came at all.

When Johanna comments on how they're familiar with each other's screams from when they were tortured in the capital, Katniss' ears burn with shame.

Xxx

It's _need_ that pushes her through training. The deep, burning need to become something other than what the Mockingjay made her. The need to get to the Capitol and be in battle like the rest of them, like she promised when she let the Mockingjay rally the people and give them hope.

It's Johanna that lets her know it's possible. It's Johanna, with her broken, scarred body in a half-delirium putting together guns, running through drills, growling obscenities but completing the tasks anyway. Johanna with the morphling addiction that's killing her, that makes her shake and wretch; Johanna with absolutely nothing left except the fire in her eyes and a couple snarky comments.

If Johanna can do it, Katniss has no excuse. And when Katniss looks at Johanna, really _looks_ at her, she knows that in the end, she'll only end up added to her growing death list - and then she _knows_ she has no excuse.

Xxx

"When we kill Snow," Johanna starts. It's late and her voice carries across the room, rousing Katniss from what was sure to become a nightmare. "I think I'll go back to 7."

Katniss raises her head from her pillow, slightly. She wonders if Johanna is lucid, or if she's backing down from that last hit of morphling.

"I mean, I don't even know what's left there. But they couldn't have burnt it all down. If they fought a war with the trees, the trees would win. You should see them, one day. After all this - if you're not dead, that is. But seriously, in the Old Forest there are trees so big where you'd need at least ten people holding hands to wrap around the trunk," she says. Katniss can see her shifting up in her bed, propping herself on her elbows. "I'd like to hang Snow from one of those. See him jerk around from the rope like a branch in a windstorm." She chuckles darkly. "It would be poetic."

It's strange, Katniss thinks - to hear Johanna talk so fondly of her home and then twist it with her anger at the Capitol. She wonders what Johanna would be like if she hadn't been reaped; if neither of them had. What would this conversation be instead? Of just trees, and no figurehead dying in its branches? She can't imagine Johanna any other way.

"Are you even listening, or did you go mute too?" she suddenly demands, irritated by Katniss' prolonged silence. "I mean, I know you're not asleep because you're not shrieking or anything weird like that."

"Sorry," Katniss mutters, shifting herself to better face Johanna. "I'm listening."

"Well, what do you think?"

"Of hanging Snow from one of those trees?" Katniss asks, sleepily.

There's a light snort. "No, brainless," Johanna says, voice dripping with that unimpressed sarcasm she has so flawlessly perfected. "Of seeing 7."

"Oh,"

"I doubt they'd let us hang Snow in 7. Not unless there were cameras and a podium for Coin, and you there, shooting apples from his mouth." She giggles at her own dark imagination.

"I'd see 7," Katniss says, after contemplating for a moment. She hadn't thought about what would come after the war. She didn't even know if she expected to live past it. Her head sinks back into the pillow, unable to fight her own exhaustion. She thinks about being able to travel and the thought is unfamiliar, but it gives her peace. "I'd bring Prim, too," Katniss adds, closing her eyes once more. "She likes that sort of stuff."

* * *

><p><strong>Drabbles within the same continuity that kind of turned into something more. I'll keep adding to this. I recently reread Mockingjay and wanted to explore the handful of weeks they had training together. The nature of their relationship is complex and endearing, and I do wish we could have seen more of it. <strong>

**Not sure when or if this will turn into a romantic joniss type of thing. I just like seeing them interact with each other. **


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